What if I don’t know anything about the stock market?

Why not use individual stocks?

What is a stock market index?

How much preparation time will it take?

How much classroom time is required?

How can a child be encouraged to save?

What do I do at the end of the 10 weeks?

What if I don’t know anything about the stock market?
Perfect! Take this opportunity to learn along with your students. The mechanics of the program are simple to follow and require no prior knowledge of the markets. As you and your students track their investment portfolio, you’ll also become more familiar with how the stock market works. There’s a handy glossary of investment terms in the back of the Teacher's Guide.

Why not use individual stocks?
This program is designed to promote good investing habits. Buying individual stocks can be instructive, but it violates one of the more important investment principles – diversification. Using the two most common market indexes makes it simple to track. And each index is diversified among a number of stocks.

What is a stock market index?
A stock index is a selection of stocks whose performance as a group is used as a way to measure overall investment results.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is the average value of 30 large, industrial stocks. The Nasdaq Composite Index measures all domestic and international based common type stocks listed on The Nasdaq Stock Market. Nasdaq companies tend to be smaller and newer companies than the companies that make up the Dow.

These averages can be used as a guide to how the economy is doing as a whole.

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How much preparation time will it take?
To become familiar with the mechanics of the program, you can spend an hour or less. There are exercises in the student booklet that will require a few minutes to see how they work.

How much classroom time is required?
Tracking the indexes and recording the results in their booklet can take students as little as ten minutes, once a week. The Charting Exercises should take around 20 minutes, once a week to complete.

How can a child be encouraged to save?
On the inside back cover of the Junior Investor Booklet, there’s a graph that shows what can happen to a relatively small amount of money when it’s invested over a long period of time.

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What do I do at the end of the 10 weeks?
Calculate your total profit or loss. Then, copy, sign and hand out certificates with students’ name written in. If you want, you can use the Assessment Rubric to assess each students’ performance.